Kodiak’s largest boat harbor once again tops the list of the city’s annual capital projects and priorities to potentially receive state and federal assistance. The replacement of St. Herman Harbor has been the City Council’s top funding priority for at least the last three years, but the costs for the harbor project have ballooned over that time and state funding options are scarce.
According to city documents, the St. Herman Harbor replacement, a multi-phase project, is now estimated to cost between $73 and $99 million. Roughly a quarter of that amount, or $23 to $33 million, is needed to complete phase one which involves building a new float for larger vessels docking in the harbor at Near Island.
The additional “O” float, which is added on to the existing floats that end at “N”, will also be big enough to allow for vehicles to drive down the dock.
Kodiak Harbormaster Dave Johnson said the price tag has gone up as things have moved along in the last few years, including getting a more accurate scope of the project. Just last year the estimated projected cost was around $60 million.
“The first estimate we had was a very rough, kind of back of the napkin calculation," Johnson explained. "Whereas now we’ve had an environmental permitting design…which helps refine that calculation to be a lot more accurate. Plus, in the 2.5 years since the original scoping document was done, the price of materials and labor has only continued to increase.”
Johnson said via email that the St. Herman Harbor replacement project’s preliminary design has been submitted for permit approval to the federal government. He hopes this part of the process will take less than a year.
The City of Kodiak already secured a grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, through the Maritime Administration Port Infrastructure Development Program (MARAD), for over $11 million back in November to support phase one of the project. That federal funding, plus the nearly $2 million from the city, still comes up at least $10 million short to cover phase one work.
The City Council approved its capital improvement projects list on Thursday, Feb. 13 requesting those funds from both the Alaska State Legislature and U.S. Congress. Currently, Congress has included the $10 million for St. Herman Harbor in its Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations bill but that has not yet been finalized.
But the city’s lobbyist in Juneau, Diane Blumer, told the council last week during a work session on Feb. 11 that state legislators say there is no money available in the budget this year.
"What we’re hearing as we go to legislative offices, are primarily that there’s no money. But usually they start out with that," she said. "We always know that the budget is ever-changing. There should be more funding if there’s a change in the permanent fund dividend payout that the Governor rolled out, which leaves the current budget at about a nearly $2 billion deficit.”
Last session the Legislature approved $1 million for the St. Herman Harbor replacement project but Governor Mike Dunleavy vetoed that along with $120 million from the state’s capital budget.
City staff added in a request to the Legislature last week that if the state could not provide the $10 million for the St. Herman Harbor project, then lawmakers should fund critical coastal infrastructure with general obligation bonds.
The other projects on the city’s capital improvement projects’ list to the state is similar to last year’s with the main difference being a formal request for $2.4 million to fund planning and designs for the first few miles of the Kodiak Island Short Trail project.
This includes three miles of trail from Pier II to the Rotary Lookout and then to the Buskin River State Recreation Area, adjacent to U.S. Coast Guard housing.
$900,000 for a new fire suppression ladder truck for the fire department, $10 million to replace Lift Station #5 – the city’s largest sewer lift station, and $950,000 to replace the Russian American Magazin’s roof are the other three projects on the state CIP list alongside St. Herman Harbor and the Kodiak Short Trail.
As for the federal CIP list, the city is also requesting roughly $2 million for the first phase in upgrading its Waste Water Treatment Plant, which hasn’t had major maintenance in over 25 years.
